But Elissa didn’t care. She would fight for Nick. She knew he was worth it. “Excuse me,” she said then, with all the dignity she could muster. At least her hiccups had faded. “I have to go write to Nick.” She stood, intending to make a haughty exit.

But however much she wished she was that sort of girl, she wasn’t. So she leaned down to hug and kiss her mother. Then she walked over to stand beside Jack’s chair. “Dad?”

Jack looked out from behind the newspaper.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she said.

She thought he almost smiled. “You could bring me my pipe,” he said.

Chapter 24

HOME OF MRS. CECILIA FRYT
412 W. First Street, Pine Rapids
Tuesday, July 25, 1950

“Judy, you’re overly dramatic,” Mrs. Fryt snapped at her copper-haired granddaughter, and Judy glared at her grandmother, then turned back to work on the quilt, yanking her needle through like an ill-tempered maestro marking beats.

Dolly, having finished quilting the green triangle and moved to the blue one next to it, decided it was a good thing, after all, that she was here and not at the beach—knowing the story of what had happened in the Mickelson house might help her to understand why the family had left it to fall into disrepair. Besides, hearing about the Mickelsons gave her a funny little thrill, when she hadn’t been thrilled about much of anything lately.

“The truth is,” Mrs. Fryt continued, “regardless of that soldier and Elissa, that Mickelson house would have fallen in on itself. I saw everything, all those years—and the truth is, no one in that family had the least bit of faith in their own two feet standing on the ground. They believed themselves helpless, and that house just fell down around them, piece by piece, while they sat there and watched like their hands were tied! And I’ll tell you when it went from bad to worse: the minute Wilma got the news about Chase. You ladies remember! How Wilma became a perfect monster. And at the moment her family needed her most! I can hardly blame John, looking back on it. You ladies remember the way she slammed the door in my face when I brought the pound cake.”

“Haven’t you forgiven her for that yet?” asked Corinne.

“As a matter of fact, no,” Mrs. Fryt said. “I don’t see why I should—why I didn’t deserve to be treated with decency, when I was reaching out to her.”

“What news?” Dolly asked nervously.

“Haven’t you seen the statue on the courthouse lawn?” Judy said. “It’s a likeness of Chase. They only added the second war’s names to it.”

“You don’t mean—” Dolly had seen the statue of a soldier from a distance across the courthouse lawn, but she had never approached it, assuming she wouldn’t know any of the names on it. Apparently, she had been wrong.